Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@bimmy-lee thanks dude. I actually got so tired I'm laying down. May Not even play games tonight 😣

Edit: I'll just play for a few 😉

@NintendoByNature - That’s the spirit! Queue Going the Distance (from every Rocky training montage, the training montages where he’s totally serious now).

Oh, LOL 🤣

@bimmy-lee Does a whip fighter fight people using a whip? Or is it someone that addresses the folks that pimp their rides? Hmmm. Both are equally important.

@HobbitGamer - Great question that clearly needs addressed. This was an open, running diary of a whip fighter who fights people in underground whip vs whip matches. I submitted them to McSweeney’s Quarterly Review, but they didn’t publish them. They don’t know what they missed! Five people on MySpace MIGHT remember though.

@bimmy-lee I remember Myspace. I think I was in middle school when my parents made me close my account the news reported after some kid got tricked into going to a hotel with a serial rapist or something. Joined Facebook without telling them when it started while I was in high school. Ironically perhaps I quit willingly last year and have been happier for the choice. lol Oh how social media has changed over the years.

I got one piece pirate warriors 3 now that it’s heavily discounted on the eshop. Because I heard it’s a good warriors game.

I’ve played warriors games, so I know I won’t be too lost, but I know nothing about once piece... Will that be a problem? Has any of you played it?

[edit] whoa sorry I didn't realize I'd typed this much!

@RedderRugfish I honestly really remember liking Myspace for the way you could put all sorts of custom stuff on your profile page. Middle school me thought that was the coolest thing online at the time. I then really enjoyed using Facebook to talk to my friends online in what felt like a natural evolution of AOL instant messenger, which I also used for years. But Facebook, or perhaps people online are different today than I remember them being when I was younger. I don't remember there being the countless arguments, insults, politics, etc that plague almost all of social media today. Seeing friends and relatives spout things online that I couldn't imagine them saying in person, horrible vile things grew to wear on me. And because controversial and argumentative thing always promote clicks, FB and other sites focus on them. I stopped seeing the status messages from people saying "Man, today was great, got off work early!" and started seeing only the negative posts with 200 comment long arguments. Fan pages would show a clip from an anime or game and all the comments would be negative or people arguing with them.

I could go on and on about it. But it drew me down a dark rabbit hole that, at my worst I was on Facebook, arguing with people all night long and going to bed angry several nights a week. It wasn't healthy. One day I finally just said enough was enough and stopped. One of the best choices I have ever made. Sure, the account is still there, but only so I can use the messenger app on my phone for international calls. And at this point only with my mother - everyone else I use Discord or Line.

I went through a similar thing with the news. In college I had professors who often stated that you have to stay up to date with the news and be sure to get it from several different sources in order to form educated opinions on topics. And I do still agree with that sentiment. But I found the same thing happening, I'd check the news from several sources regularly and it was always awful, always led me to hate everyone all sides. It was another rabbit hole of negativity. I quit watching he news regularly in April and now I only very sparingly keep an eye on it.

I just can't go there anymore. Maybe the fault is in me, unable to avoid that dark rabbit hole if I go near it. But for my own health and sanity, I needed to stop. Otherwise I'd end up hating everyone.

@bimmy-lee I had no idea "essential oils" now means illicit things....I thought of it as Oprah-fied cosmetics marketing scams for department stores and Sephora to sell.

And I had no idea "vape" stuff was about anything other than cigarettes and tobacco. Now I will view the dozen "vape" stores around here, and all their customers as criminals in need of a swift boot of justice, or a lead pipe to the face, whichever is easier.

Now that you kind folks have enlightened me to the world around me, I'm going to return to my hermit status for good.

@HobbitGamer I heard something about pimps and whips and I spaced out for the rest of it after that....what?

Also, @bimmy-lee is Bimmy Belmont, confirmed!

@Heavyarms55 So you couldn't stand the fact that news on all sides of an issue was just hatred of all other sides of the issue, mixed with lies and misinformation.....then you decided to come to a console video game website...? shakes head

Well I think most of us were thinking about the “smells nice, use it on a diffuser” type of essential oils.

Though they’ve been getting infamous as the usual focus of several multi-level marketing scams.

At the Administration Office for work, one of the staff has a little diffuser in their cubicle. I don’t know what the oil is, but every time I smell it I think I’m walking into Sunday Mass.

I felt depressed again. 😞
My PC had a Freeze symptom since last year and now i couldn't even open my CorelDraw files (but i could open Corel Photopaint files)
I'm working on my Boxer projects but my PC has fated to get wrong oftenly. I'm thinking to have a laptop since i only work with Corel Draw / Photopaint and some Excel / Microsoft Words.
I don't think i have enough mood to play my video games to heal my depression.... 😔

@Morpheel - It’s comically true that essential oils are the current pyramid scheme, but I also thought it was fairly well known that not all these people are selling essence of lavender on FB. It’s a real thing.

@NEStalgia - Bimmy Belmont here. You can vape anything that can be broken down to its essence and mixed with a vapable liquid. In recreational states, anything they sell as a solid is usually offered as a liquid for this purpose. Years ago, I used a vaporizer to kick cigs. Took me about 10 months to taper down. The vape shops themselves don’t sell anything illicit, but the people who work there often have second jobs. I went to three different shops routinely for my liquids, and after the staff there got to know me a bit, I was offered all kinds of alternative liquids for my vaporizer in the form of parking lot transactions. Always turned them down because I assumed it was draino and spice.

@bimmy-lee Now that I've had some time to think about it, and look up some info, I realized I probably mixed up MySpace with other social media crap. Doesn't seem like there wasn't much smiley-usage going on concerning MySpace, unless of course, you plastered your profile page with them...

The only social media I've ever used in the past, was a then popular chat program ICQ, which simply stood for
"I seek you", for the people unfamiliar with it. Now THAT was a hotbed of smileys, let me tell you.

As for old action movies and our sentiment about them, vs other (mostly younger) people's sentiments:
First off, we've got that attachment of our youth to it, so that sentimental value is likely a big influence upon how we see those movies, so a bit of the rosy-tinted spectacles effect going on there, probably.

Secondly, save for a few exceptions, the "dudebro" action hero movie character has all but disappeared and is mostly also seen as a politically incorrect stereotype, that may set a bad example for the ever so easily influenced youths of today, and the faster world in which they're trying to survive, and so on and so on, blablabla... /s

For clarification's sake: only the first part (ending with "stereotype") of that previous bit was serious.

Anyway, one final point in the equation, is the sometimes (or is it often times?) laughably bad special effects, which back then probably looked REALLY cool to us, but look pretty bad nowadays. Just look at the stop-motion robots in both Judge Dredd and RoboCop. Even some of the explosions in the first Die Hard look silly compared to modern action movies.

And remember that scene with the toxic waste in RoboCop 2? Pretty scary for some, and pretty "realistic" to most of us back then, but nowadays, it looks like something out of a Troma movie. Toxic Avenger comes to mind...

So, a lot of the heroes are now probably seen as either too bulky or too overpowering (and let's not forget the sometimes cringe-worthy one-liners), making most of them uber-stereotypes of the good guy, and the special effects were pretty variable, ranging from good to laughably bad.

It's kinda reminds me of how TV series of my youth have also changed from being pretty exciting to being pretty laughable, such as Airwolf and The A-Team. I was on the edge of my seat watching those back then, and nowadays, it's mostly a cringe-fest to me.

@NEStalgia No, not all essential oils consist of illicit materials, only the essential oils written in quotes...

@ThanosReXXX
"It's kinda reminds me of how TV series of my youth have also changed from being pretty exciting to being pretty laughable, such as Airwolf and The A-Team "

My kindergarten age has been introduced by Clubber Lang (Mr. T) from Rocky III. 😶😳😅

@HobbitGamer - It’s frankincense. I use it at home quite a bit. It’s a purifier, and it’s used in certain Catholic masses and funerals.

@ThanosReXXX - Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head. While I concede the stop motion in Robocop, and the melting toxic guy who explodes like a trash bag full of spaghetti when hit by a car look kind of funny today, I’m all about practical effects; especially in horror. I struggle to suspend disbelief with CGI. Even though it looks realistic, it just seems like a cartoon to me. In horror, practical is always much scarier and realistic to me, even though it’s clearly an actor in a rubber mask. I’m a huge Troma fan. Toxie, Tomatoes, Class of Nuke Em High, pretty much all of them.

@bimmy-lee
Tomatoes??

@bimmy-lee By the way: over here, these specific "essential oils" and related products can be bought in your regular body and health stores:
https://www.hollandandbarrett.nl/shop/vitamines-supplementen/...
The bit of text on the top of the page underneath the header "CBD OLIE" translates to:

"This CBD oil is of the highest quality, completely legal and not addictive. Choose from several strengths oil or capsules for internal use or care products."

Tsk tsk, Thanos, adding links to your supplier’s site. Think of the children.

@Anti-Matter Well, that explains the violent outbursts you sometimes have...
You DO know Clubber was the bad guy, right?

@bimmy-lee I know you are a Troma fan, so that's why I mentioned that, because I knew you could relate and would be able to make a decent comparison. But I'm with you on using practical effects nowadays, though. But with today's technology, they can also make them look a lot more realistic.

But CGI is slowly getting better as well. Just compare the earlier full 3D animation movies to the Disney efforts that we have currently. The difference is night and day, and to me, it looks realistic as hell. The immersion only being semi-broken by realistic looking animals talking like humans.

Then again: we also had Mr. Ed, back in the good old black & white TV days...

P.S.

Wouldn't ever use frankincense at home. Just the thought of my house smelling like a funeral is already more unsettling to me than any horror movie could ever make me feel.